Understand how to use groundbreaking science to improve your health, mood, and more.In just the last few years, scientists have shown how the microscopic ecosystem within our bodies—particularly within our intestines—has an astonishing impact on our lives. Pioneering scientist Rob Knight and award-winning science journalist Brendan Buhler explain—with humor and witty metaphors—why these new findings matters to everyone.You are mostly not you. The human gut is host to trillions of microbes, and evidence shows that small changes in these microbes present (altered by antibiotics, diet, geographic region, and so on) may affect weight, likelihood of disease, and even psychological factors like risk-taking behavior. The evidence for their influence is astonishing. Rob Knight is one of the key figures driving forward this new science. His work demonstrates the startling connection between the presence of certain harmless bacteria and the health benefits we all seek for ourselves and our children.In Follow Your Gut, Knight pairs with Brendan Buhler, an award-winning science writer, to explore the previously unseen world inside our bodies. With a practical eye toward deeper knowledge and better decisions, they lead a detailed tour of our microbiome as well as an exploration of the known effects of antibiotics, probiotics, diet choices, birth method, and access to livestock on our children's lifelong health. Ultimately, this pioneering book explains how to learn about your own micro biome and take steps toward understanding and improving your health, using the latest research as a guide.

    You leave the house for a latte and somebody'll flip you the bird on your way and force their loud cellphone conversation on you once you're there. It doesn't have to be that way, says award-winning syndicated columnist Amy Alkon. Her hilarious stories of her in-your-face encounters with rude people and businesses will inspire you to stand up to the boors in your own world. Alkon not only gives the offenders a taste of their own medicine, she delves into anthropology, psychology, and behavioral science to figure out why we're rude and how we can stop all the intruding, shoving, and shouting. She ensures that all these rude people get their comeuppance: -Lax parents -Internet bullies -Rude drivers -Negligent businesses -Telemarketing executives -Car thieves -Parking space hogs -That loud jerk in the drugstore line In this funny, ferocious and freewheeling expose, Alkon gives you the tools you need to confront these abusers and restore common courtesy, respect and good manners to society...one chastened cellphone shouter at a time.

    Readers of this book will come to accept the truth about themselves, boost their confidence by identifying the lies they're telling themselves, and change their lives by concentrating on becoming who they really want to be.

    This classic insider's account has been updated and supplemented with rare photographs from the LRDG collection in the Imperial War Museum.

    But millions of people suffer from Sensory Defensive Disorder (SD), a common affliction in which people react to harmless stimuli not just as a distracting hindrance, but a potentially dangerous threat. Sharon Heller, Ph.D. is not only a trained psychologist, she is sensory defensive herself. Bringing both personal and professional perspectives, Dr. Heller is the ideal person to tell the world about this problem that will only increase as technology and processed environments take over our lives. In addition to heightening public awareness of this prevalent issue, Dr. Heller provides tools and therapies for alleviating and, in some cases, even eliminating defensiveness altogether.Until now, the treatment for sensory defensiveness has been successfully implemented in Learning Disabled children in whom defensiveness tends to be extreme. However, the disorder has generally been unidentified in adults who think they are either overstimulated, stressed, weird, or crazy. These sensory defensive sufferers live out their lives stressed and unhappy, never knowing why or what they can do about it. Now, with Too Loud, Too Bright, Too Fast, Too Tight, they have a compassionate spokesperson and a solution–oriented book of advice.

    Gann’s classic pilot's memoir is an up-close and thrilling account of the treacherous early days of commercial aviation. “Few writers have ever drawn readers so intimately into the shielded sanctum of the cockpit, and it is hear that Mr. Gann is truly the artist” (The New York Times Book Review).“A splendid and many-faceted personal memoir that is not only one man’s story but the story, in essence, of all men who fly” (Chicago Tribune). In his inimitable style, Gann brings you right into the cockpit, recounting both the triumphs and terrors of pilots who flew when flying was anything but routine.

    She’s an assassin without remorse or fear, doing the bidding of an agency so secret that only three people know of its existence. But when her cover gets blown, she becomes the target of a wide-reaching conspiracy led by a mysterious figure whose connection to Chandler goes far beyond what she could have imagined. Now she faces an explosive twenty-four hours—a single day in which everyone she encounters seems hell-bent on ending her life. With any past ally suddenly a possible traitor and every present emotion a weakness for her enemies to exploit, Chandler must tap into her deepest reservoirs of strength and skill in order to survive. But her survival is just the beginning as she confronts a murderous lunatic with a personal agenda, a squad of assassins just as skilled as she is, and a diabolical plot to unleash nuclear holocaust across the globe.Spree:Super spy and assassin Chandler has just barely averted nuclear annihilation when the very organization she works for has her brought in on treason charges, trussed up for interrogation. After a run-in with Chicago Homicide cop Jack Daniels, Chandler discovers one of her sisters, Fleming, has been transferred to a black ops site where the modus operandi is torture and death. Chandler launches a breakneck mission to infiltrate an impossibly secure prison—putting her on a collision course with a squad of violent psychopaths trained to negate her precise skill set. As old enemies reemerge and new ones appear around every corner, Chandler will rely on the help of unexpected allies, including an ex-mob enforcer named Tequila and a firefighter named Lund. But even they may not be enough to stop what lurks within the unlisted military base: a rogue government agency plotting to destabilize the entire nation—and conquer the world.Three:Time is running out for Chandler, the elite assassin whose mission to rescue her sister from a notorious black ops prison landed her at the top of the nation’s Most Wanted list. Burned by her handlers and forced to work with her mortal enemy in a race to preserve the very government that wants her dead, the living weapon has become a ticking time bomb. In saving her sister, Chandler unleashed a power-mad American president dead set on controlling the world—no matter how many millions of innocent people he must kill to do it. To stop him, Chandler will go deeper than she’s ever gone before, pushing her body and mind to their absolute limits. All the while she is hunted by the one man who knows her every secret, her every hiding place—and her every weakness. Infiltrating the White House, crashing a bullfight in Mexico City, hijacking a blimp in Toronto…these are just the beginning of the end, as the Codename: Chandler trilogy races towards its stunning conclusion.

    ...In Ashton’s story, Flemming struck it rich.”-- Boston Globe Based on a rare manuscript from 1725, At the Point of a Cutlass uncovers the amazing voyage of Philip Ashton -- a nineteen-year old fisherman who was captured by pirates, escaped on an uninhabited Caribbean island, and then miraculously arrived back home three years later to tell his incredible story.Taken in a surprise attack near Nova Scotia in June 1722, Ashton was forced to sail across the Atlantic and back with a crew under the command of Edward Low, a man so vicious he tortured victims by slicing off an ear or nose and roasting them over a fire. “A greater monster,” one colonial official wrote, “never infested the seas.” Ashton barely survived the nine months he sailed with Low’s crew -- he was nearly shot in the head at gunpoint, came close to drowning when a ship sank near the coast of Brazil, and was almost hanged for secretly plotting a revolt against the pirates.Like many forced men, Ashton thought constantly about escaping. In March of 1723, he saw his chance when Low’s crew anchored at the secluded island of Roatan, at the western edge of the Caribbean. Ashton fled into the thick, overgrown woods and, for more than a year, had to claw out a living on the remote strip of land, completely alone and with practically nothing to sustain him. The opportunity to escape came so unexpectedly that Ashton ran off without a gun, a knife, or even a pair of shoes on his feet. Yet the resilient young castaway -- who has been called America’s real-life Robinson Crusoe -- was able to find food, build a crude shelter, and even survive a debilitating fever brought on by the cool winter rains before he was rescued by a band of men sailing near the island. Based on Ashton’s own first-hand account, as well trial records, logbooks, and a wealth of other archival evidence, At the Point of a Cutlass pieces together the unforgettable story of a man thrust into the violent world of a pirate ship and his daring survival and escape.“A dark and fascinating tale. At the Point of a Cutlass takes us into corners of the pirate life we haven’t been before. …one of the most harrowing survival stories of the colonial era.”-- Stephan Talty, author of Empire of Blue Water, The Illustrious Dead, and Escape from the Land of Snows.“Flemming’s dramatic history of real pirates is vastly better than the Hollywood version!”-- Markus Rediker, author of Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age, and The Slave Ship: A Human History.

    But when a senior officer has a messy affair, it falls to Reim to do the clearing up. It should be a straightforward job. Lean on a few people to get them to shut up. Intimidate neighbours, bribe officials and appeal to the socialist conscience of Party members. But when Reim starts his interrogations, he realises his boss is hiding more than just a lover. Lieutenant Reim begins to investigate his superior—and what he uncovers puts his own life at risk. Cracking DDR crime from the author of the East Berlin Series

    Packed with advanced electronic-surveillance equipment and classified intelligence documents, the USS Pueblo was poorly armed and lacked backup by air or sea. Its crew, led by a charismatic, hard-drinking ex-submarine officer named Pete Bucher, was made up mostly of untested sailors in their teens and twenties.On a frigid January morning while eavesdropping near the port of Wonsan, the Pueblo was challenged by a North Korean gunboat. When Bucher tried to escape, his ship was quickly surrounded by more patrol boats, shelled and machine-gunned, and forced to surrender. One American was killed and ten wounded, and Bucher and his young crew were taken prisoner by one of the world’s most aggressive and erratic totalitarian regimes.Less than forty-eight hours before the Pueblo’s capture, North Korean commandos had nearly succeeded in assassinating South Korea’s president in downtown Seoul. Together, the two explosive incidents pushed Cold War tensions toward a flashpoint as both North and South Korea girded for war—with fifty thousand American soldiers caught between them. President Lyndon Johnson rushed U.S. combat ships and aircraft to reinforce South Korea, while secretly trying to negotiate a peaceful solution to the crisis.Act of War tells the riveting saga of Bucher and his men as they struggled to survive merciless torture and horrendous living conditions in North Korean prisons. Based on extensive interviews and numerous government documents released through the Freedom of Information Act, this book also reveals new details of Johnson’s high-risk gambit to prevent war from erupting on the Korean peninsula while his negotiators desperately tried to save the sailors from possible execution. A dramatic tale of human endurance against the backdrop of an international diplomatic poker game, Act of War offers lessons on the perils of covert intelligence operations as America finds itself confronting a host of twenty-first-century enemies.

    He flew six space missions in three different programs—more than any other human. He served with NASA for more than four decades. His peers called him the “astronaut’s astronaut.”          Enthusiasts of space exploration have long waited for John Young to tell the story of his two Gemini flights, his two Apollo missions, the first-ever Space Shuttle flight, and the first Spacelab mission. Forever Young delivers all that and more: Young’s personal journey from engineering graduate to fighter pilot, to test pilot, to astronaut, to high NASA official, to clear-headed predictor of the fate of Planet Earth.          Young, with the assistance of internationally distinguished aerospace historian James Hansen, recounts the great episodes of his amazing flying career in fascinating detail and with wry humor. He portrays astronauts as ordinary human beings and NASA as an institution with the same ups and downs as other major bureaucracies. He frankly discusses the risks of space travel, including what went wrong with the Challenger and Columbia shuttles.          Forever Young is one of the last memoirs produced by an early American astronaut. It is the first memoir written by a chief of the NASA astronaut corps. Young’s experiences and candor make this book indispensable to everyone interested in the U.S. space program.

     Garrett Walker is a warrior. For the last decade and a half he’s been continuously at war –combat rotation after combat rotation. He’s a veteran of the close fight. And he’s taken a great many lives. Yet, all that combat and all those deaths were in the service of his country. Now, that’s about to change. Since their college days, Garrett and his identical twin have been estranged. They were both in love with the same woman, and she chose Garrett’s brother. So Garrett chose the Navy SEALs. Then, following the death of their younger brother, also a Navy SEAL, yet another tragedy strikes the Walker family. The twin is caught in the web of a Russian Mafia organ-theft ring. He was just another business man in Las Vegas on just another business trip. Then drugged and alone, strange men enter his hotel room and crudely remove his kidneys. It’s a rare crime, but one that happens more than is reported. For those in the black-market organ trade, easy pickings right? But they didn’t count on the resiliency of the one twin, nor the rage of the warrior twin. Together, they embark on a mission. Together, they put all the rules to aside bring about the ultimate Act of Revenge. About the Author Dick Couch. Navy SEAL, Combat Veteran, CIA Case Officer, New York Times Best Selling Author–with eighteen books to his credit. During the Global War on Terror, Dick Couch alone has been allowed to embed with the component commands of the US Special Operations Command. Dick Couch alone has tracked the SEALs, Green Berets, Rangers, and Marine Special Operators as they trained for war–and written extensively about this training. Now after eight books of special-operations nonfiction, Act of Revenge marks his return to fiction.

    When he was three years old, Tito was diagnosed as severely autistic, but his remarkable mother, Soma, determined that he would overcome the problem by teaching him to read and write. The result was that between the ages of eight and eleven he wrote stories and poems of exquisite beauty, which Dr. Oliver Sacks called amazing and shocking. Their eloquence gave lie to all our assumptions about autism.Here Tito goes even further and writes of how the autistic mind works, how it views the outside world and the normal people he deals with daily, how he tells his stories to the mirror and hears stories back, how sounds become colors, how beauty fills his mind and heart. With this work, Tito whom Portia Iversen, co-founder of Cure Autism Now, has described as a window into autism such as the world has never seen gives the world a beacon of hope. For if he can do it, why can't others?Brave, bold, and deeply felt, this book shows that much we might have believed about autism can be wrong. Boston Globe

    The classic, artful design and intriguing stories highlight Luci's unique insight and perspective that transform otherwise regular days and occurrences to experiences worth living.With the challenge to stop saying "if only" and "why me" and start asking "what if" and "why not," Luci encourages everyone to lead truly adventurous lives that yield countless blessings, lessons and inspiration. Never before has anyone modeled the joy and adventures of the journey with such clarity and insight.Readers will be drawn to "I Married Adventure" as it is Luci's first full-length book in over 10 years and is a personal tour of her unique approach to squeezing the most out of a life led by Christ.

    Your Own Worst Enemy is the first book devoted to the problem of adult underachievement, a problem stemming from common behavior patterns that can manifest itself in almost every walk of life -- from twentysomethings stuck in dead-end jobs to outwardly successful businesspeople who can't help feeling they've missed their true calling.In Your Own Worst Enemy, Dr. Kenneth Christian details the telltale signs of what he calls self-limiting behavior -- everyday habits that can seem harless (like taking unchallenging jobs) or even worthwhile (like setting absurdly high standards), but that over time can send high-potential people into a tailspin of dead ends and frustration. He identifies underachieving types, from charmers, who substitute congeniality for effort, to extreme risk-takers, who casually gamble their future away, to best-or-nothings, who refuse to play if they can't win. And he offers practical 15-step guide to help underachievers shake off their old habits and start taking an active hand in their own future.Filled with persuasive case studies and useful advice on everything from overhauling workspace to remaking self-image, Your Own Worst Enemy will help underachievers everywhere visualize their goals, break through their barriers, and start realizing their unlimited potential.